Insights from Nebo

Given that I eat, sleep, and breathe SEO, I deal with content regularly. Good content, bad content, and just plain ugly content. If there’s one thing that’s worse than bad content for content marketing purposes, it’s bad content for SEO.

With that said, the last thing a copywriter wants to hear is SEO ideas for content. They’re not focused on keywords and search volume. They’re interested in the content itself.

And we agree.

The creative process should be left largely unadulterated. We -- SEOs, creatives, content marketers -- should be creating content for our readers, not search engines. We should be writing content to educate and inspire audiences.

Which is where competitive research comes in. Doing competitive research for content ideas does entail looking into search trends. But it’s more than that. It’s using tools to see what the market is hungry for. It’s seeing what competitors are doing and making that a baseline for what content and creative can achieve. It’s finding what’s out there, what consumers want, and seeing how we can better serve those wants.

It’s about giving customers more.

By 2020, Millennials will make up the majority of the workplace. In fact, a lot of us are already here. Which means in a few short years, many offices will be made up of a ton of young professionals.

Although there are articles upon articles that tell workplaces how do deal with Millennials…what about the opposite? How are Millennials going to deal with the workplace?

How are you, as a new employee, going to be successful?

Last week, Nebo celebrated its 12th birthday party. There was cake, champagne, and speeches — the usual celebratory elements.

But this party was special. Not because of the 12 different cakes (although that was amazing). Not because of the live music (I learned what an e-sax was). Not because of the champagne (although that helped). It was special because of the people in the room.

This year, Nebo turns 12.

Twelve is a number in space and time. The world’s greatest religions place significance on it. In Christianity and Judaism, there are 12 Tribes of Israel, 12 Disciples of Jesus, and 12 books of Revelations. There are 12 Stations of Life in Buddhism. Our calendar has 12 months. The list goes on.

And although every number has significance if you really think about it, the questions is: what does 12 mean to us?

In 2011, I tried stand-up comedy for the first time. I heard that everyone bombs the first time on stage, and I was no exception.

It was at a place called The Five Spot in Little Five Points. I wore a bright tank top, a crystal necklace for good chi and copper bracelets that supposedly promoted good circulation. Since losing interest in astrology, my wardrobe choices have changed considerably. I performed at an open mic night with an audience of bitter comedians, angry that NBC didn’t cast them in a sitcom half a year into their careers. It wasn’t an easy crowd.

People rush off to meaningless jobs day after day, you see them coughing in the subways at dawn. They squander their souls on things like rent, decent clothes, gas and electricity, insurance, behaving like peasants who have come out of the fields and are so dreadful tickled because they can buy baubles and doodads in stores.

 -Jack Kerouac, 1948, age 26, author of On The Road

Today is a great day. I woke up to a steady, beating rain outside. I love a rainy Sunday. Uh oh, gotta go to the bathroom.

-Drew Grossman, 2015, age 26, author of Pumpkin Drewskis: Drew’s Take on Pumpkin Brewskis

The sentences above are taken from the journals of two writers. One is a Nebo copywriter and the other is a 26-year-old who, up to this point in his life, hasn’t published much and lives with his parents.

To use the word “writer” to describe us both may be overly generous to my case, but that’s not all we have in common. We also both journal (or journaled). Most good writers journal, from Hemingway to Kerouac to Kafka to David Foster Wallace.